


quietly, gently

by hansoom



Category: TWICE (Band)
Genre: Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-01
Updated: 2019-03-01
Packaged: 2019-11-07 08:30:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17957138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hansoom/pseuds/hansoom
Summary: Sana isn't unaware of the fact that she does her own fair share of ridiculous romanticizing. Sometimes it's to the press, in a stuffy room where the interviewer wants to know about her pillars of support. Sana says her family, and her friends who loved and love her all the way from their home in Osaka, and then -- maybe a little for the fans, but maybe a little for herself -- Momo. The person who's strung to her by the strings of fate: after all, the way they stumbled onto the same plane together was nothing short of cosmic.





	quietly, gently

_Let me sleep_  
_I am tired of my grief_  
_And I would like you_  
_To love me, to love me, to love me_

 

 

 

Momo jolts to her right as their van rounds a sharp bend, her elbow jangling uncomfortably into Sana's side. Sana lets out a yelp - small, because the rest of them are sleeping, and Momo's wide eyes turn to rest on Sana's waist.

"Sorry," Momo says, gently, softly, in their mother tongue. She pulls her elbow away from where it's landed, tucking it over her chest and under the grey seatbelt that's slung over it.

"It's nothing." Outside, the snow has patterned on their window, and Sana presses her face to the glass, feels the coolness of it colour her skin. When she turns back, Momo has already fallen asleep. When Momo slumbers, there's always a wry smile on her face. Sana's never asked her about it - maybe out of fear, or jealousy, or just because the gentle way Nayeon is looking at her from the seat across from them says enough.

 

/

 

Sana has always believed that friendship (capital F, actually) is something like an art form. There are some barriers in Korea that never existed in Japan; but the same goes the opposite way. Her first year here was a navigation of that, the second year an opening to breathe. The years after, she'd found her footing, flourished. Momo did too, even in a different way.

The intricacies of their youth flowed like that, followed them as they grew, angrily, awkwardly, terrified - into adults.

Maybe it's why Sana's palm are a little clammy when she holds onto Momo, the two of them stumbling off stage in a blur of flashes of light and smiles from people they know and people who know them. Momo turns back to smile at her backstage, and then hooks Mina's arm in so they pull into a small circle, just the three of them. Momo doesn't love them more than any of the others, but it's become a bit of a habit. The familiarity grounds all of them, even if all it does these days is make it hard for Sana to think clearly. Mina's bright eyes are staring back at her, her thumb rubbing familiar patterns on Sana's wrist.

Or maybe it’s something else entirely.

Sana takes a deep, grounding, breath. When she opens her eyes, their manager is ushering them through the next door, and the next, and Sana sees it all behind her eyelids: flashes of Momo's smile flickering in her brain, the little accompanying jump-starts in her own chest.

It's scary, and disconcerting, and it _hurts_. Shoots down to the tips of her fingers and lingers there like ugly reminders of her own folly.

She shakes her bangs out of her eyes and keeps walking to the end of the hallway. Their van is waiting.

 

/

 

The truth is that - when you've loved someone for so long, the lines in your head start to blur. Sana tries not to think about it - _shouldn't_ , really, when she has someone waiting for a reply to his good morning text on KakaoTalk. She rolls out of bed, ignoring the notifications spilling onto her phone screen, and opts to pull on a shirt, wandering out into the kitchen, where - surprise, surprise - Momo's back greets her.

"Morning, Momoring", she says in Japanese, and Momo's slight tilt of the head is the only sign of acknowledgement.

"Good morning," Momo says. She's making some hybrid of nutella toast on the counter (no plate, mind you), not bothering with pants for today, the back of her shirt hanging loose over her the slopes of her thighs.

"Toast?" Momo asks, in Korean, folding the bread slice into two. Sana is still thinking about the sliver of skin that Momo showed when she reached up to close the cabinets. It's not really anything she hasn't seen before - far from it, really - but she feels the blush anyway, angling her face towards the table top.

"Hey," Momo notices, it seems, and rounds the counter to stand beside Sana. "You alright?"

Sana would rather stay quiet than risk making a sleep-addled mistake right now, so she bites her tongue and takes small sips of coffee. It's an off-day for some of them, but Sana has a schedule later today and has to head to the salon in a few hours. Ergo, a few hours for her to make stupid mistakes and say needlessly jealous things in Momo's vicinity.

"Are you sick anywhere?" Momo presses again, her hand already reaching for Sana's forehead. Sana shakes her head. She could dismiss Momo now by saying something hurtful - and Momo would run away, toast in hand, through Nayeon's open door - but Sana doesn't have it in her heart to do so. Because they know each other so well, Sana is always careful in this way, economical with the weapons she wields against Momo.

"Just tired."

Momo's brows knit.

"Okay," the other girl says softly. "Do you need anything?"

"No, it's - it's fine, Momoring," Sana cuts in, and her voice is low and a little terrifying to herself. She wraps the shawl she'd brought out a little tighter around her shoulders and does a sort of half-hearted shiver, startling a laugh from Momo. "Just a lot on my mind. I'm going back to my room."

She's picking up her cup of coffee when Momo's fingers slide around her wrist, anchoring her in place. "If there's something you're not telling me, that's fine, but at least be honest about whether you're okay."

Sana flexes her arm, watching the way her wrist turns within Momo's grip. "I get my own secrets too, you know," Sana says, and it comes out petulant.

Something flickers over Momo's face, a brief mix of confusion and something else that Sana can't quite place.

"Right," Momo breathes, and the smile she wears isn't quite natural. Sometimes Sana wonders why they pretend around each other, when Sana can read Momo from the way her lips quirk, from the spring of her step. She guesses it's still only human to protect oneself from getting hurt.

Sana is about to stomp back to her room when Momo lets out a noise. "What did you mean? When you said "too"? I'm not hiding anything," Momo insists, but her voice shakes in a way that makes Sana hesitate. Doubt. Because that's all her stupid, silly, brain can do recently.

"It's nothing," Sana says, and doesn't slam the door.

 

/

 

They fight in a hair salon. It's the silliest thing, really, but Momo's perched by Sana's side while they're bleaching her hair for the third time, and they're running out of topics to cover, so Sana throws caution to the wind and asks: _how was Japan?_

She doesn't say _with Nayeon_ , but Momo picks up on it anyway, and Sana watches the way her face lights up. Momo's vocabulary has always been simpler, but she's still evocative, and Sana listens until she doesn't want to anymore and Momo trails off into a small, barely audible stream of noise.

"Are you listening to me?" Momo asks, and Sana can't turn her head to look at Momo because of the huge towel wrapped over her head, so she just rolls her eyes.

"Sounds like a lot of fun," she finally says, and call Sana petty, but she didn't ask for a report on Nayeon's movements through Japan and into Momo's house and parents' hearts.

" _You're_ the one that asked _me_ how it was," Momo retorts, but doesn't make to move away because she's tethered to Sana too, even if in a different way. Momo has never stormed out of an argument with Sana, always stayed even when Sana got angry, or annoyed, or plain upset, hovered around like a sentinel until Sana gave in, wrapped her arms around Momo and mended the space between them.

Without meaning to, Sana softens, reaching blindly for Momo's hands. Momo's hands are soft ( _like babies' hands_ , she'd commented, the first time she held them, thousands of sleepless nights ago, the two of them splayed out across the practice room floor).

"Sorry," Sana says, and means it, squeezing Momo's hand twice for good measure. Her phone buzzes beside Momo on the couch, and Momo's eyes flicker to the new message, then back to Sana's face. Momo squeezes back.

The glimpse of Momo's smile that Sana catches in the mirror is small but sincere, her next words a peace offering: _and what about Hong Kong?_

 

/

 

Sana isn't unaware of the fact that she does her own fair share of ridiculous romanticizing. Sometimes it's to the press, in a stuffy room where the interviewer wants to know about her pillars of support. Sana says her family, and her friends who loved and love her all the way from their home in Osaka, and then -- maybe a little for the fans, but maybe a little for herself -- Momo. The person who's strung to her by the strings of fate: after all, the way they stumbled onto the same plane together was nothing short of cosmic.

Still, Momo shrugs uncomfortably when she lays this out again for yet another article, laughing that laugh of hers. Momo finds it hard to meet her eyes when they say things like this in front of other people, as if someone were forcefully yanking off a blanket to reveal the childish secrets underneath. Except, Sana thinks, the childish secret is just that Sana loves Momo, and Momo loves her just as much, and there is an ocean between them that neither are brave enough to cross.

Somehow a secret like that is harder to bear than most.

So Sana lets Momo do her dithering, her _hm_ s and her _ha_ s, her awkward laughter and changes of topic. If it hurts, it only stings dully. Sana thinks it quite a small price to pay.

 

/

 

In a fried chicken shop tucked in a deep corner of Gangwon, Sana accidentally spills an entire bottle of soju onto Momo’s chest.

She rushes Momo into the bathroom, shying away from people who’ve already started to recognize them, and pulls Momo into an open stall. Somewhere in the bustle Sana’s pulled off Momo’s shirt and started wiping at her stomach with wads of tissue, and when she looks back up, Momo’s face has turned entirely red, as bright as the sunrise in Okinawa.

“Hi,” Momo says, and laughs, clutching onto Sana’s two arms like a lifeline. Her face is so close to Sana’s that she can see the faded freckles across Momo’s nose, the little acne scars that are usually caked under layers of makeup.

“Hi,” Sana says back, and is suddenly afraid to breathe.

The first thing: Sana does think about it. They’re here, and no one is watching them, and Momo is staring at her lips. The second thing: Sana doesn’t do it. She’s responsible, and thinks ahead, and most importantly, neither of them are inebriated.

The third thing: Momo jerks forward first. Sana tilts her head to the left so Momo only catches her on the edge of her mouth, and then Momo is pulling back with a laugh that doesn’t reach her eyes.

They walk out of the shop with Momo in a dull blue jumper, zipped all the way up to her neck. Momo doesn’t look at her once on the way back home.

 

/

 

Momo climbs into Sana's bed one morning in the dead of winter. Sana has only gotten two hours of sleep, and the intrusion is terrifying at first until she feels Momo's breath against her ear, hears the voice that sometimes lulls her to sleep in the car. Sana is sure Momo can feel her relax dramatically against her, and hopes if nothing else that Momo feels some guilt at the poor choice of approach.

"You really scared me there," Sana whispers, because there's someone else in the room who's trying to get their fair share of rest, and then says nothing else because it's all her fatigue will allow her.

"I was just thinking," Momo whispers back, arms tightening around Sana, and Sana lets out a muted laugh.

"Dangerous activity for you-"

"Shut up," Momo snaps back, softly, gently, in the way only she can. The hand that's pressed under Sana's body shifts to tuck stray hairs behind her ear, and the motion is terrifyingly tender. "Let me be serious."

"Okay," Sana says, and feels her heart beat a little faster. Momo could say anything from _I love you_ to _Let's go get some ramen_ and Sana would be none the wiser.

Instead, Momo says:

"Do you love him?"

Somehow, Sana thinks, the two of them have been inevitably hurtling towards this very moment, and Sana thinks the truth is that she will never be brave enough. In many ways, she has always been a realist, and whatever it is between them must stay like this, caught at the edges of what is comfortable and acceptable. Sana has been dating this boy for 5 months. She has been in love with Momo for what seems like forever. Both of these are true.

"Yes," she says, finally, and feels Momo sag against her.

Momo's voice is even smaller when she asks, "and me?"

Sana closes her eyes. The night is so dark that it really doesn't make a difference, but there's something like an anchor that comes with it, the feeling that the ground is still underneath her feet. It's all in Sana's mind, she knows, but it's the only thing she has. She takes a deep breath for courage.

"Yes," she says, loud enough only for the two of them. Her voice is wet. "More than you could imagine."

If Momo leaves damp streaks against her nape, Sana says nothing about it, only grips Momo's hands tighter between her own. Whatever they are and whoever they love is buried in the night, whisked away with the morning sun.

Momo wakes up in her bed anyway because Momo always, always stays.

 

/

 

In the airport, Sana loses Momo in the crowd of fans. Their manager is trying to bring them back together, but the fans are particularly overwhelming today, and Sana finds herself pushed further back until someone grabs her hand, insistent enough to guide but not to hurt.

Momo shoots her a lopsided smile before pulling her away into the clearing that the fans, now contrite, have created around them, and Sana mouths a _thank you_.

“You’re welcome,” Momo says loudly, tucking Sana’s arm under her own. She tips Sana's chin up gently with her finger, and Momo's eyes are bright and focused, peeking out from under the rim of her bucket hat.

It feels like a secret of their own.

 

**Author's Note:**

> this has been languishing half-written since june last year until [sana revealed that she and momo took the same plane to korea](https://twitter.com/ediblemomo/status/1100409211958087689) and i got the burst of energy to finish.


End file.
